More Than Age Binds Paterno and Bowden

MIAMI, Jan. 2 - They are the top two winners in major college football history, with only six victories separating them. Each is wrapping up his 40th year as a collegiate head coach. They are Nos. 1 and 2 in career bowl victories. And each has a son on his coaching staff.

Indeed, the coaches fit well in the diverse cultures of their regions. Paterno is a stiff-lipped, all-business Italian-American from Brooklyn who only infrequently gives one-on-one interviews and generally treats the news media with a certain disdain. He is fiercely supportive of his players, and that shines through to Penn State loyalists. Just as endearing, he has resisted many overtures to jump to the National Football League.

Bowden, meanwhile, is obviously more the showman. He never saw a microphone he didn't like. He is one of the most accessible college coaches in the country, to the point where his number is listed in the Tallahassee phone book. And his folksy style has made him one of the South's most popular football personalities.

Bowden basks in his popularity. Paterno almost cringes about his. He told his wife, Sue: "I just want to be a nobody. So I can take a walk where I want to walk and not get stopped."

Of course, Paterno may have begun to cherish his privacy more in recent years. Although the Nittany Lions had made 30 bowl appearances in his first 34 years on the job, they went through four straight losing seasons, 2000 to 2004. Paterno came into this season with 17 losses in his previous 24 games.

Suddenly, near Thanksgiving 2004, Paterno found his job security in serious question. At his door were the Penn State president, Graham Spanier, and three other top university administrators. They were there in an effort to persuade him to retire.

Paterno did not bite. According to a recent lengthy interview Paterno gave to The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, he spoke passionately about the Nittany Lions being so close to returning as a national force in 2005.

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"That's all I said to them," Paterno told the newspaper. "They didn't quite understand where I was coming from or what it took to get a football program going. I said: 'Relax. Get off my backside.' "

To say Paterno is taking some measure of satisfaction from repelling the intentions of Penn State's highest-ranking officials is an understatement. But the overture by Spanier and his colleagues did put Paterno on notice that something needed to change -- and quickly.

Bowden had been largely immune to questions of job security until this season. The Seminoles lost their last three regular-season games. It did not help, either, that the offense declined in that fadeout and that one of Bowden's sons, Jeff, was the team's offensive coordinator.

Paterno, whose son Jay is the Penn State quarterbacks coach, has faced Bowden on the head-coaching lines seven times. Paterno won the first six meetings, when Bowden was at West Virginia, from 1970 to 1975. But Bowden won their last meeting, in 1990 at the Blockbuster Bowl in Miami, 24-17.

The two met in 1962, but Paterno, a Penn State assistant at the time, does not remember much about it. Bowden was the head coach at Howard College -- since named Samford -- and wanted to see how Penn State operated. The $55 in travel money that Howard, located in Birmingham, Ala., could spare got him as far as Lewiston, Pa., and he hitchhiked the rest of the way. He wound up staying in a fraternity house.

About 20 years ago, the two began to get better acquainted when they and their wives socialized on trips organized by a national shoe company. They eventually realized that there were not many coaches around with their longevity, so that became a bond of sorts.

"There's a dignity about Bob," Paterno said at a news conference. "You see it when you've known him as long as I have. Competing against him. Beat him and lost to him and recruited with him. There's a respect there. That's a word you don't hear much any more. Respect. Too bad. That's a great word to have in sports."

Regarding the career victories record that could still go to either coach, Paterno said it would not bother him if Bowden won 450 games. Bowden said he would not become caught up in the chase, either.

As Bowden put it, "You're not going to take it with you when you go, are you?"

COLLEGE FOOTBALL Correction: January 4, 2006, Wednesday Because of an editing error, a sports article yesterday about the longtime coaches of the teams in the Orange Bowl, Bobby Bowden and Joe Paterno, referred incorrectly to Penn State's recent losing seasons. It had a record under .500 in four of the past five seasons, not in every season from 2000 to 2004. The article also misstated the name of the city in Pennsylvania from which Bowden hitchhiked to Penn State in 1962. It is Lewistown, not Lewiston.